Well hopefully I will get my money back from travel insurance, but in case anyone was super keen on this sudden vacancy, I can put you in contact with Stephen Venables and Skip Novak (Pelagic expeditions). Ski mountaineering trip to Antarctic Peninsula. Depts Ushuaia on Feb 2nd (team meeting on Feb 1st). Think there were 8 on the boat, now theres 7 as I have had to pull out.

Hopefully my incapacity is only a few weeks and I wont have to resort to such desperate measures WWS! Paddling my seakayak on the lake is probably one of the first things I can get back into. Walking isnt going so good right now.

On 23/01/2013 widewetandslippery wrote:>Doing a colo food dump/recce this weekend and newnes to colo the week>after next.

Have you thought about the Capertee to Colo? The Capertee has decent water from Glen Davis, so that was my first thought for a week long through trip. I really want to do either trip but I have a project I have to finish first this summer.

You could paddle to windsor and get the train home.

>Did the snowy last year with Dale and would be keen again with better>water or not.

If you can kill a few willows along the way, NPWS will kindly drop you off at the start. Email me if you want further details.

Me and En got packrafts for Chrissie. Immediately regretting not getting a sprayskirt as the boat filled up with water while playing in the surf on the Murrumbidgee. Have paddled the Colo and thinking where else can I play despite the lack of water around. Ideas?

If I get bored next week I was going to paddle from Wondabyne to Brooklyn. (Think: choo choo train both ways, cliffs to look at along the way)

On 23/01/2013 Miguel75 wrote:>Woohoo, thread hijack... Ummmm>>Did anyone else feel cheated when Beyonce lip-synced the US national anthem>at Obama's inauguration? ;)>>Back on topic; that trip looks like an amazing experience. Sorry you can't>take it this year Vanessa.

On 23/01/2013 widewetandslippery wrote:>>Doing a colo food dump/recce this weekend and newnes to colo the week>after next.>

I don't think that the 'bit of rain in the next couple of days' will allow you to shoot King Rapid at all.
As you would have seen from BoM; from Mudgee to Richmond, it is 'a few showers' daily until Wednesday.
Grose Vale guage shows interesting heights at the moment - the other guy on the Packraft forum might be right.

The Colo is typically a 200m wonderful drift, in a packraft, then 50+m of portaging. Repeat and repeat.
I would not expect more than say, 10km per day, pack-rafting the Colo River. Even Ms. L. Shepherd appeared to find this fatiguing, between Canoe Creek and Bob Turners Tk, yet the beauty of the gorge is worth it.

In case you didn't know, don't sit on rucksack in packraft and bounce over that half-metre length of water-over-rock to get to next pool. I am now an expert at repairing Packraft bases.

The packraft will get absolutely no use at all on the Wolgan.

Don't walk upstream too far on the Capertee with a full pack, a significant rainstorm event c.Dec 2010(?) knocked down much vegetation. Even in shallow water without vegetation aiming towards you, this is tiring; each lift of one foot forward sees the other sink in sand. It is OK to walk downstream on the Capertee.

WWS - have emailed you some photos of continuous ankle-deep water on the Wolgan, taken on a 6-day weeding trip for NPWS/Friends of the Colo. My suspicions were confirmed through three other week-long walks W to E across Wollemi in 2011.